How to Lease a Car

First, decide exactly what vehicle you want, including color, interior, options, etc., and make sure the dealer has one in stock or can get one before discussing any numbers. Then, make the dealer give you all the numbers up front, not just the monthly payment, but everything on the contract you will eventually sign. Get a copy of that agreement if you can, or barring that, get everything in writing.

Keep in mind that whether you are buying or leasing, the most important number to focus on is the actual negotiated price of the vehicle. This, plus the acquisition fee (not to be confused with the destination charge), equals your capitalized cost. The capitalized cost and the rental payment, as the fine print in the “New York Motor Vehicle Leasing Disclosure Box” helpfully tells you, “may be negotiable.”

Now, here is where it gets tricky. Directly under the line for capitalized cost is the capitalized cost reduction, which the leasing agreement describes as cash down and the value of any trade-in vehicle. In a no-money-down lease like mine, that line should read $0.

So why was mine $1,993? This was a number we had never negotiated or even discussed. When I asked Khaled’s brother Amir, who was handling the paperwork, he said that included the destination charge and “other fees.” Of course, I should have stopped everything right there, but I had already been at the dealership for more than an hour, and he sounded so reasonable and matter-of-fact about it that I just let it slide. Another big mistake.

When I mentioned to Khaled in a telephone interview recently that the capitalized cost reduction was the one number that had taken me by surprise, he said that “everybody’s entitled to their own opinion about the process.” Khaled insisted that the monthly payment was still the best number for consumers to focus on. “I’m very straightforward and honest,” he said. “That’s how I sell cars.”

Yet even if you successfully negotiate the capitalized cost reduction to zero,...